Wednesday, February 04, 2004

Inch by Inch, Row By Row...

A better world starts with dirt under the nails.

By 6:30 every week-day evening, when it was warm enough, Debessay had shed his work clothes for a T-shirt and shorts and was outside. Hauling away debris, hammering in railroad ties to frame raised planting beds, trolling garden centers.

Into the ground he buried the uncertainty and stress of his immigrant life. As a stone in his garden is inscribed, "the earth laughed back in flowers."